


Still partners?

by another_Hero



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: F/F, Food, THIS IS SOME QUEERPLATONIC SHIT, alcohol mention, pinball, queerplatonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15664992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: Constance: "can I still call you my aspirational queerplatonic aunts?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Great appreciation to Tatea14 for...uh, using the word "queerplatonic" in the context of a Lou/Debbie fic (honestly) (credit to them for the existence of this)
> 
> I'm expecting that this will have a more limited audience than some of my other fics, but I hope those of you who read it have fun with it :)

Debbie was limping a little when she walked into the loft.

“Who do I need to take out?” Lou asked.

“I hit my knee jumping the turnstile.”

A smile grew slowly enormous on Lou’s face.

“If you say a word—”

“I don’t think I need to.” Lou came over next to her. “Do you want to get it looked at?”

“You can just kiss it better.”

“You’re a child.” Lou bent down to look at the leg, but Debbie wasn’t sure what she was hoping to see through jeans. It felt swollen; maybe that was it. She started upstairs to change into something looser. “You could afford a MetroCard, you know. Or a cab. Or one of those fake cabs from the internet that sometimes abduct people.”

“How do you even live in the world?”

“I’m just saying, I admire your pettiness, but you could always _pay_ to get from place to place.”

“And here I told my brother you were a nice girl,” Debbie called down the stairs.

“Don’t blame me for your own poor judgment.”

When she was dressed again and had taken a chance to look at the bruise starting on her knee, Debbie went back downstairs, lowered herself gingerly onto the couch, and asked Lou, “Have you thought about lunch?”

“Honey, I’m always thinking about lunch.”

“Okay, well, _what_ have you thought, and can it be something that allows me not to move from this couch, please?”

“Do you need some ice or anything?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt that much. What I need is food.”

“You should really work on some basic survival skills,” Lou suggested. “Like feeding yourself. That’s a big one.”

“Why would I need to feed _myself_ when I have you? And Postmates. If you died, my best friend would be Postmates.”

“Let’s not be getting ahead of ourselves,” Lou said from the kitchen.

“Why? Who would be your best friend if I died?”

“Whatever place I lived that wasn’t fucking New York.”

Debbie knew Lou didn’t like the city, never really had. There was a time when she’d thought Lou would move, but Lou had made her priorities clear. It made Debbie a little anxious to be the unspoken first—so far first that Lou had stayed in the city, put down roots here, even while Debbie was in prison. It was exactly what she wanted, but she wasn’t sure how to reciprocate, or how to formalize it. They hadn’t ever talked about what they owed to each other. She’d have left with Lou as automatically as Lou stayed with her, but they had more things tying them down in the city now than they had had ten years ago.

Like Constance, who at that moment walked into the loft. She arrived unannounced, but that was usual with Constance. “Hey Mom,” she said. “Hey Boss.” Constance didn’t address them by any consistent names, and Debbie wasn’t entirely sure which was who in this case.

“Please tell me I’m Boss. What’s up?” asked Debbie, pulling her legs down off the sofa so Constance could sit.

“I just wanted to run something by you. So I’m thinking of asking Nine Ball to be, like, my person. Platonically. Queerplatonically. You know?”

“I don’t. Know.”

“Like, a friend who you don’t bone, or kiss or whatever, but it’s like, your primary relationship also. So I was wondering if you had any advice on how to talk about that.”

“I’ve never even heard of anything like that,” said Debbie. “I mean, it sounds great, but we’re definitely out of my expertise.”

Constance made a fairly ridiculous, stunned face at Debbie that was interrupted by Lou calling, “Do you want lunch, Constance? I’m making omelets.”

“Sure. Thanks.” She turned back to Debbie. “Don’t play.”

“I’m not. You want Nine Ball to be, like, your girlfriend, but without the girlfriend part.”

“I’m not sure that’s the description I would use, but yeah, basically. I mean, I’m pretty sure if I dated I would want to date her. Actually, we might actually be dating. She slept at my place twice last week. But I don’t do romance. And she knows about that, so it’s not going to be weird.”

“So what are you worried about?”

“I mean,” said Constance, “how do I suggest it? Like, I’ve never asked someone to try to make a commitment to me. At all! And this isn’t, you know, the usual kind.”

“You shouldn’t ask me and Lou about commitment,” Debbie said. “The last person I had a relationship with put me in prison for six years, and when Lou dates people they always cry, and then she doesn’t go out with them again.”

“I can hear you,” Lou called.

“But like,” said Constance, with a gesture at Debbie, and then Lou came over with three plates and three forks.

“Nine Ball’s going to listen to you,” Lou said. “She cares about you. She knows you care about her. It’ll go all right.”

“Thanks, babe,” said Debbie, taking a bit of her omelet, “this is great.”

“Feeling all right?”

“Wait, what’s up?” Constance asked.

“Nothing,” said Debbie. “I’m fine.”

“She hurt herself jumping the turnstile,” Lou said, not precisely laughing.

Constance, however, cackled. “No way. Ma. You are _way_ too flush to jump the turnstiles.”

“We’ve discussed this,” said Lou. “It’s her _style_.”

“You own twenty-six suits,” Debbie said. “Don’t make fun of me for having a style.”

“It’s not consistent, though. You wear nice clothes, but you take transit like a punk teen. It’s two different styles.”

Constance got a text. “Hey, I gotta go meet Nine Ball before she starts opening up.” She stood up and saluted with her empty plate. To Lou, she said, “Thanks for the lunch. Let the boss like what she likes.” To Debbie, “Don’t break any bones, but if you do, film it.”

“Good luck,” Debbie said. “Let us know how it goes. If it’s bad and you need ice cream, text ahead and I’ll make Lou go get some. But it’s going to go fine. Even if she says no, she’ll be supportive.”

“Thanks,” said Constance, setting her plate in the dishwasher. “Luckily, I’m great at awkward situations.”

Debbie smiled as she stood up, grabbed her plate and Lou’s, and headed to the door to see Constance out, then put the dishes away. “Imagine coming here for life advice,” she said, shaking her head.

“Tammy isn’t conveniently located.”

“Did you know Constance didn’t date?”

“I’d never heard her mention it either way.”

“No, it kind of makes sense.”

“Are you walking better?”

“Yeah,” Debbie said. She settled carefully on the couch again and lifted her legs up onto it; Lou was still in the chair, facing her. “It’s just a bruise.”

Lou nodded and pulled out her reading glasses and Debbie's thoughts shrank to the size of the room: a whole afternoon and nowhere to go, Lou settled and calm, Debbie full and trying to stay still. She stayed there quiet for a while, and then she made two cups of coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm absolutely going to rewrite my last fic, which I didn't end up liking that much, to be 100% More Platonic and post the rewrite because wow I am All About Platonic over here
> 
> Debbie Ocean canonically takes the F train in the movie and canonically does not have a metrocard so I assume she jumps the turnstiles because talking people into letting her in seems like a lot of work


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PINBALL  
> if you make jewelry out of cork and sell it on the internet, I'm sorry, but Lou Miller doesn't think you're cool.

Lou went on a date. She was home by 9:30, which was early even for her bad nights, and Debbie, who was familiar with this process by now, pulled a beer out of the fridge. Lou wasn’t distraught or anything; it was an eye roll, a frustrated sigh that she hadn’t realized they could actually get _worse_. “This one”—Lou had met this one through the last one, in a mildly ridiculous game of telephone whose only purpose seemed to be filling Lou’s evenings—“sells jewelry on the internet. I’m not joking. She makes it out of cork. She makes jewelry out of cork and sells it on the internet. I don’t think you can call it jewelry if it’s made out of cork, but she does.”

Debbie chuckled. “Was she looking at you when she said this?”

“That’s how we got there. She told me she loved my necklaces, and that was what she did.” Lou was grinning now, and she took another drink.

Debbie smiled wide enough to bend her head forward. She felt a little sorry for the stranger, but not sorry enough to stop making fun of her. More than that, she was grateful to be the one that Lou came home and told the story to. It seemed so improbable, Lou still being here, even though she’d never doubted it, and for a moment she was too caught up in it to answer.

“I honestly don’t know why I still do this,” Lou said. Debbie didn’t either, frankly. Lou never seemed to enjoy it. For her part, she didn’t feel the slightest inclination these days to make room in her life for someone else, though she knew she couldn’t expect Lou to be content just because she was.

“Well,” said Debbie, “what are you hoping to get out of it?”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I’m serious. If you just want sex, there has to be an easier way. If you want a girlfriend, you don’t have to go on recommendations from strangers. What’s the target?”

Lou sighed. “I don’t know, honestly. I’m bored by all of them. I never want to tell them anything about myself. I think I’m just doing it out of habit.”

Debbie had never known Lou to have a habit of dating before she took up with Becker. “Want to go out?” she suggested. She could try to make up for it now, at least. “I have an idea.”

“What kind of idea?” But Lou’s skepticism was the lighthearted kind, less real worry than part of a game.

“You can wear that,” Debbie said. She went upstairs for shoes, glue, fishing line, a few quarters, and a handful of pennies, and when she got downstairs, she grabbed Lou’s hand to pull her out the door.

“Is it far? Because I’m not taking the subway, so you’ll have to tell me where we’re going.”

“It’s not far, and I don’t know why you’re questioning my ideas.”

“Is there any chance that if another person were spending their evening in this way, they would go to prison?”

“No way. Petty theft at best.”

“I thought you were going to show me a good time.” And when they got there: “A bar.”

“It’s _inside_ the bar.”

“Secret passageway?”

“Pinball machine.”

Lou was nonplussed. “We’re stealing a pinball machine?”

“We’re playing pinball, asshole. Do you want to steal it? That wasn’t my plan, but we could scope it out.”

Lou grinned. They used to use a quarter soldered to a wire or a firm kick to the front of the machine or pennies up the coin return to get free games and spend whole nights playing pinball, but she hadn’t thought of it in years. “No,” she said. “Let’s play.”

“All right, well, I haven’t tried to hack this machine yet,” Debbie said. “It was the oldest one I could find, so I’m figuring it isn’t very smart.”

“Funny, that’s how I describe you.” Lou was leaning on the machine, making her most engaged banter face, while she spread the glue thin over fishing line on one of the quarters and dipped her finger in a glass of water to get the glue off. They weren’t right by the bartender, but they were in plain view. Debbie delivered the water to the bar like a finished drink and went back to her partner to make a moment of talk while the glue dried.

The coin on the string didn’t work. Something inside the machine cut it off, and Debbie could see the fishing line go slack. “Damn,” said Lou, “quarter down.” Debbie shrugged. “I’m stunned you’d give up a whole quarter to play an arcade game.

“It’s not about saving,” Debbie said, “it’s about _getting_.” Debbie tried flicking pennies up through the coin return—Lou made an old joke about what she was doing with her hands—but their flapping covers didn’t allow her enough room. She shrugged and shoved her knee—not the one she’d recently injured—between the coin slots. One credit. She shoved it again. Two credits, a play for each of them. “You go first.”

Lou played pinball as intently as she did anything. She bent over the machine, and her whole body went still, except for her head, which followed the ball. Debbie tried to heckle, but Lou ignored her, barely even flashing a smile when things went her way. Debbie loved her the most when she was like this, totally absorbed, and felt suddenly very glad she had started noticing pinball machines around town.

And Lou played well. When she let the ball fall through and turned the game over, Debbie lost so quickly she got an automatic re-shoot, then lost again almost right away. Even after watching Lou’s turn, there were too many things on the board to pay attention to, too many unfamiliar moving parts. She made way again for her smirking partner.

After three rounds—on the third, Debbie acquitted herself, though just adequately—Lou took over doing violence to the machine. The bartender came over and asked her to stop assaulting their pinball game, but they were ready to play by then. Lou was apologetic with the bartender and chuckled once they left. “I guess this one’s for all the marbles,” Debbie said. “Friendly wager?”

“What did you have in mind?”

Back in their least glamorous days, a forfeit for a bet might have been a treat, either stolen or purchased, but it was more likely to be a free question. They didn’t tend to keep a lot of secrets from each other, but winning the bets made them ask each other things they wouldn’t think of otherwise. These days, a treat would have been a function of inconvenience, not expense: getting a pastry that required waiting in a long and early line or something you could only find outside the city, but there wasn’t any one thing they were both terribly attached to. Debbie was going to lose the bet, that was a given. “Free question?” she said.

Lou got a look on her face that might have been fond. “You’re really committed to this retro night out,” she said. “Free question it is.”

No one could have been more surprised than Debbie when Debbie won the game. “So?” Lou asked, “my forfeit?”

Debbie tucked her arm into Lou’s as they stepped outside. She hadn’t planned ahead. A free question was a license to be embarrassing and intrusive, but Debbie couldn’t quite bring herself to ask the thing she wanted. So she watered it down. “What do you daydream about?” she asked.

Lou considered, didn’t speak right away. When she did, she said, “Leaving the city, I daydream about that. And with work, of course, there’s all sorts of things.” Lou had devoted a healthy amount of her fortune and a healthy amount of her time to domestic violence survivor services. She still kept odd hours, dressed like a rock musician, and was technically a volunteer, but it was her answer now when people asked her what she did. “But ideally those turn from daydreams into plans before too long. And in the rest of my life, when I want something, I just get it. Or I have it already.” Lou was looking her right in the face, but then, Lou was often looking her right in the face. “How about you?”

“This was my question,” Debbie protested, but she answered with little more than a shrug. “Jobs, even once we know what they’re going to be and how we’re going to do them.” Lou already knew how Debbie liked to plan. “Pie, I daydream about pie. Permanence.”

Lou tilted her head. “What feels unstable?”

Debbie shrugged and said, more or less truthfully, “I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lou's new field of work is coopted shamelessly from [footprint(s)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15602157) by emkat97, which is a DELIGHTFUL fic about Nine Ball and supportive friendship. if you're here reading queerplatonic content, I assume you like fic about supportive friendship, so check that one out if you missed it.


	3. Chapter 3

Constance came over, with Nine Ball in tow. Debbie had been wondering how things had turned out, but since she never actually understood Constance’s texts, she had put off asking. So as soon as she called “Hey, criminals” into the warehouse, Debbie was headed toward the pair of them.

“So?” she said.

“Thanks for your help, Deb. I’m not sure you actually did give me any help, actually, but if you did, then thanks.”

“So you guys are that not-girlfriend thing?” Debbie clarified.

“Yep!” said Constance, and “Yeah,” said Nine Ball, and they high-fived, though Nine Ball rolled her eyes when they did.

“And did you just—know what that was?” she asked Nine Ball.

“I mean, I knew she didn’t date. We talked about what people do instead.”

Debbie nodded. She couldn’t figure out how to say something like “and that doesn’t bother you?” in a way that didn’t involve saying something like “and that doesn’t bother you?” Instead she went with, “That’s great. I’m so happy for you.” She was a little surprised by how sincerely she felt it: as much as she wished Constance and Nine Ball well, she didn’t exactly keep up with their romantic or semi-romantic exploits. She still didn’t exactly know whether they were highly committed friends or something else, but she was pretty sure they knew, and that impressed her far more than it made her jealous. And they were so young. She was proud of them in a way that she wished, in a tiny twisting place in her gut, she could be proud of herself.

Lou was still working, but she would be home soon, and some of the others would be over as well. Debbie pulled out some chips, poured drinks for Constance and Nine Ball, and asked after Veronica, who was thriving at Caltech. Nine Ball was not thrilled about having her sister all the way in California, and she wasn’t one for extensive sharing, but she absolutely shone when she described her sister’s success. Debbie, for her part, checked how Constance and Nine Ball sat together: in this case, Nine Ball’s knees were up against the side of the couch, her feet in socks against Constance’s leg.

Daphne let herself in, and Amita arrived with Lou. Once their friends were welcomed and invited in, Debbie sat down in a chair by the coffee table, and Lou, in the crowded room, sat right on her. Debbie snorted and rubbed her back and asked a quiet “How was work?” under their friends’ loud debate about the merits of different species of sharks as getaway drivers.

“Good,” said Lou, shifting her beer to her left hand to wrap her right arm around Debbie’s neck in the high-backed chair. “It was all with people, though; I’m pretty tired.”

“If you need to check out,” Debbie said, and Lou shrugged.

“I’ll be here for now,” Lou said, rubbing Debbie’s shoulder, “but I might not be great company.”

“Hey Lou,” Constance called, “if you had to ride either a tiger shark or a great white shark away from an underwater crime, which would you choose?” Sometime in the conversation, Debbie noticed, Constance’s hand had found its way onto Nine Ball’s knee, and when she lifted it up to make a two-choices gesture, she set it back there.

“A great white is going to be much faster with a person on its back,” Daphne said. “Or a whale shark.”

“But a tiger shark is more _unassuming_ ,” Amita insisted. “A great white could get in the way of your plans. It’s way more likely to scare people off.”

“Depends on the job,” Lou said, and she leaned her head against the chair back. Debbie leaned hers against Lou’s chest, and Lou’s right hand came up and ran over it.

“I mean, you’re just stealing buried treasure, aren’t you?” said Constance. “There’s no one else around for the shark to scare off. Anyway, I want a hammerhead. You can hold onto it like handlebars.”

“Y’all don’t know shit about what different sharks actually _do_ ,” Nine Ball pointed out, reaching for her phone. “I want the smart one. It’s gotta be able to take me to the right place.”

Debbie, who was deeply uninvested in this conversation but glad to have it happening around her, took a sip of her wine. “I’m ready to order food,” she said. “What are we getting, and can one of you get it because there’s a person on me.”

“On it,” said Amita. “Okay, empanadas, arepas, aaaaand ice cream sandwiches?”

Nine Ball nodded, and Constance said, “Good call.” They kept talking until a knock came at the door.

Debbie pressed on Lou to let her up, though Constance went to answer the door. Lou didn’t move. Somehow Debbie hadn’t noticed, but Lou had fallen asleep. Debbie took a moment to admire her before saying, “Hey, Louise.”

“Excuse you,” Lou muttered.

“You want to come eat dinner with us?”

“No,” said Lou.

“Okay, well, can you let me out from under you so I can go have dinner with my friends?”

“No,” said Lou, putting her fucking arm in front of Debbie.

“Well, this is a predicament,” Debbie said, and then she slid Lou’s legs off of her and walked over to the table, grabbing an arepa from the box and setting it on a plate. “Where’s the ice cream?”

“It should be here in like fifteen minutes,” Amita said.

When it arrived, the commotion was enough to draw Lou out of her nap chair. “Ice cream?” she said, “that’s dinner?”

“Empanadas were dinner,” Amita said.

“Dinner was so great,” said Debbie. “I can’t remember when I last had such a good dinner.”

Lou shrugged and took an ice cream sandwich. “Me neither.” She did this eyebrow lift that had to be illegal in three states, lifting the ice cream sandwich like a drink in a toast, and she sat by Debbie and talked to Nine Ball while they ate. Then she put her hand on Debbie’s shoulder by way of a good night—that, when she could have just disappeared up the stairs—and Debbie really was going to have to talk to her about whether, and how long, they were going to be people who didn’t leave the party without saying good night.

“She okay?” Nine Ball asked, gesturing after Lou.

“Yeah,” Debbie said, “yeah, long day, I think.”

“So, Deb,” said Constance from beside her—and wait, Constance had just been on the other side of the room, but here she was now, beside Debbie—“you and Ma really don’t have a thing going on?”

“By ‘a thing,’ I assume you don’t mean friendship, or work partnership, or living together?”

“No! no, a _thing_.”

Constance was not Debbie’s usual choice of confidante, especially when she was still working things out. “We never have,” Debbie said. “We never…needed it?” It wasn’t exactly true. They’d never _thought_ they needed it. They’d never discussed it. “I never really wanted to sleep with her or anything, and it isn’t exactly a normal friendship, but we built it up like a normal friendship, if that makes sense. We never thought of doing anything else. At least, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t? Like you are now?”

“I’m not sure it matters.”

“But you want to commit.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Debbie said.

“But you want to.”

“I like to know what’s coming.”

“You gotta talk to your girl.”

“You gotta stop giving me life advice,” Debbie said.

Constance nodded. Took it in. “All right,” she said. “Well, can I still call you my aspirational queerplatonic aunts?”

“You do realize we aren’t related.”

“You do realize that’s not what ‘aunt’ means.”

“Sure,” said Debbie, closing her eyes and raising her eyebrows at the same time, “call us whatever you want.”

Constance made a hat-tipping gesture and jumped around Debbie, somehow, to sit by Nine Ball.

Debbie went to bed before most of the crew had left. There were good odds that some of them would stay over, and Debbie just couldn’t stay up with them. Besides, they all had preferred places to sleep by now, and they would be able to manage perfectly fine themselves. She looked through the bathroom into Lou’s room, and Lou was asleep now, limbs at all angles under the blankets and sticking out. Debbie, determinedly resisting the urge to watch her sleep, closed the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Debbie and Lou aren’t going to use the word “queerplatonic;” I just had trouble imagining they would feel the need to apply it to themselves as I’ve set it up here (especially given that their relationship in the movie is liiiike basically already a qpr, or a former qpr being renegotiated, or something). They ARE going to have a talk about commitment. But it was important to me to get that language into the story. Enter Constance lmao


	4. Chapter 4

After everyone left the next day, Debbie took a nap. It was her habit to nap in Lou’s bed, just as, when she was a child, it had been her habit to nap in her parents’: other people’s beds, Debbie felt, were objectively better nap sites. You didn’t wake up there and think it was the next day, and also, if you liked them, their beds smelled nice. So she went for a short nap in Lou’s.

When she woke, it was to the sound of movement in the room. It was a little confusing, the smell of Lou in her bed and the view of Lou in front of her hanging a jacket in her closet. She rubbed her eyes.

“She lives.”

“Hey,” Debbie said.

“Am I interrupting? I’d hate for me inhabiting my bedroom to get in the way of your day of sleep.”

Debbie propped her head on her arm. “Were you okay last night?” Debbie hadn’t wanted to ask until they were alone.

Lou nodded decisively. “Fine,” she said, and then, “I just had to think through some things.”

Debbie frowned. “And were they…okay?”

“They were good.” Lou came over, and Debbie made room for her to sit in the bed, backwards if she were to lie down, with one leg out toward Debbie’s and one on the ground. “But I wanted to talk to you.”

Debbie sat up, and she pulled her knees up in front of her. “What’s up?”

Lou grinned. “You didn’t have to sit up. Nobody died.”

“You said you wanted to have a talk with me. You’re lucky I’m not pacing.”

Lou put her hand on Debbie’s feet through the blanket, and suddenly the tops of her feet felt like they were made of escaping bees. “Not have a talk. Just talk.”

Debbie nodded. “Go ahead.”

“I wanted you to know,” said Lou, and she might have practiced saying this before, “that I’m not going to just leave someday and not come back. I mean, you already do. Know. But you were talking about it. About permanence, I mean. And then with, you know,” she made a gesture out of the room, “everyone last night, I just—” She shrugged. “It’s different. Always been different. There’s friends, and there’s you.”

Debbie nodded. When she didn’t say anything, Lou went on.

“I know we don’t really have the kind of life where you make promises. But I can. I will.”

Then Lou cleared her throat, and she didn’t talk anymore, and it was Debbie’s turn, and she had to say something. Did Lou know she had been thinking about this? Constance must have gotten to them both. She nodded and nodded. “You’re so important,” she said finally, almost a whisper.

Lou’s hand, which had been in her lap, scrabbled for Debbie’s, and Debbie reached out and took it.

“You’re so important to me,” Debbie said again—it felt necessary, adding the last two words.

Lou was looking at their hands, blinking fast, but Debbie looked somewhere near her eyes anyway. She wished she had known Lou was this concerned. She’d have brought it up before.

“It’s you and me,” she said. “I’m not leaving again. I’m not.” Her voice was a little hoarse, and she had to cough, suddenly, just a little. She had to blink more than what seemed like the normal amount.

Lou met her eyes, and she was definitely crying, and Debbie wasn’t going to get much more out, was she.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I promise, too.”

Lou’s thumb was rubbing almost painfully against the first knuckle of Debbie’s index finger. Debbie opened her knees, and Lou climbed over her own legs into Debbie’s lap, and now Debbie was crying too, just a little, and laughing, just a little, and pulling Lou’s head against her and resting her lips on it and running one hand up and down Lou’s arm and clutching her shoulder with the other and trying to breathe more steadily so she didn’t jostle Lou.

“Am I going to get your makeup all over my clothes?” she murmured.

“Fuck your pajamas,” said Lou.

“Fuck my pajamas,” Debbie conceded. Lou pulled her head back after a minute, red-eyed and letting her breath out in a burst that sounded half like a laugh, half like relief. Debbie looked at her smile until it was too much and she had to look down to her shoulders, to her hand where it hung on Debbie’s elbow.

“You know, I love you,” said Lou.

Debbie nodded. “I love you,” she said. She turned sideways enough to start lying down, laying Lou down with her, facing her. She leaned into Lou and closed her eyes, feeling Lou’s arm on her back, Lou’s chin on her forehead, Lou’s knees and feet against hers, feeling exhausted by everything they’d said. They stayed that way long enough for Debbie to wonder how long it had been, before her stomach growled and Lou chuckled and loosened her grip. “Did we just,” said Debbie, “get friend married?”

“No,” said Lou, “we’re _not_ going to say it like that.”

“But,” Debbie said.

“No,” said Lou, but she grinned. “What do you want to eat?”

“We just committed to each other maybe forever and professed our love. I’m pretty sure we got friend married.”

“You’re not funny.”

“Baby, if you’ve got a better name for it.”

“We had a fucking talk. Come on, let’s get lunch.”

“You said we weren’t having a talk.” Debbie didn’t actually feel the need to be this obnoxious, but she was having trouble toning it down. The conversation had been so heavy; she could only sustain that for a little while, but she couldn’t quite get back to lightness and was stuck being petulant instead.

“All right, _I’ll_ have lunch,” said Lou, climbing out of bed fully dressed.

“Let’s get tacos,” Debbie said. “I have to put clothes on, though.” She walked through the bathroom to her bedroom, leaving the door open. “So if we’re not married, what are we?”

“Partners?”

“We were already partners.”

“Still partners?”

“I bet Constance has a word for it. I bet everybody under 35 knows exactly what’s going on with us.”

“Are you not clear on what’s going on with us? I can give you a refresher.”

“We should probably tell her. Constance. And prepare for screaming.”

Debbie walked back into Lou’s room. She’d only changed her pants, and there was still a smudge of eye makeup on her gray shirt. Lou raised her eyebrows. Debbie raised hers right back.

“Where do you want to go?” Lou asked. “You can decide, but you have to tell me, ’cause we’re not going to take the subway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Debbie and Lou? TALKING about their FEELINGS? no kudos, not believable
> 
> y’all can thank Tatea14 for the crying. left to my own devices, I probably would not have gotten to crying. (if you hate it, blame me ofc; I’m a grown adult who can make my own decisions.) 
> 
> thanks to everybody who’s commented on/otherwise supported this fic. I wanted to write my previous one as qp but honestly wasn’t sure anyone would want to read it, so obviously I jumped the first time the word “queerplatonic” was even USED in a COMMENT (thanks, Tatea14). but I still wasn’t actually sure anyone would like it or even refrain from complaining about it. I feel very silly about that now! the small but mighty support for this one has made me very happy indeed


End file.
